Since my main desktop/workstation operating system is openSUSE, I have been following the development for the upcoming 10.3 release. It looks pretty certain that 10.3 will release with the 2.6.22 kernel, which is pretty good news for many mythtv users. As I have mentioned before, the the ivtv driver (for hauppauge TV tuner cards) has been integrated directly into the kernel for this release, thus removing many of the problems associated with out of tree drivers.

Alpha 5 seems to have some stability problems in the new GTK+ edition of YaST. Continually, I am receiving X warnings about missing theme elements. Also, pidgin seems to be missing from the installation DVD (although libpurple is included); thus I had to manually download and install pidgin from the Factory repository.

As usual, the latest evolutionary updates have been integrated for most packages.

Now in Factory, GCC has been updated to version 4.2. As a software developer, this is one of the most important behind the scenes changes for me. Specifically, this release finally brings support for OpenMP to C and Fortran (which I don’t use). Since openSUSE is the base platform for all software that I write, I plan on taking full advantage of this technology (sorry if you’re on a system that hasn’t updated to GCC 4.2 yet, or otherwise doesn’t support OpenMP). Essentially, this will simplify the development of paralizable code for use on multi-core processors. I hope to see all major OSS vendors migrate to at least GCC 4.2 in the next year or two, to take advantage of this new technology.

However, if I am going to be writing software that will use OpenMP, I need to be able to configure the compiler to use it with the autotools. The development version of autoconf (upcoming 2.62) has support for detecting the necessary configuration options for detecting how to tell a compiler to build with OpenMP support enabled. With any luck, the autoconf guys will be able to release the update before the software freeze for 10.3.

The only other package that I am interested in is x.org. Keith Packard has shown some pretty fancy stuff with hotplug input/output. Very cool for laptops, as well as people with USB tablets. Hope that the timing works out here with x.org 7.3 and openSUSE 10.3 as well! Current estimates are for x.org 7.3 to arrive in August, which may just squeeze in before the package freeze.

Anywho, I have had enough.

Goodnight

I have been running openSUSE as my primary desktop OS since the 10.1 release. For the most part the experience has been positive, but definitely not for the technically challenged.

I initially started using openSUSE as the platform for my mythtv media server. That server sports a Pentium D 920, 1GB of RAM, a Hauppauge PVR 350, a 80GB system drive and a Hardware RAID 5 array using the Areca 1210 PCIe Raid Controller. Total RAID capacity is 900GB (4x300GB drives).

The first major problem that I encountered was that the arcmsr driver was not included in the upstream 2.6.16 kernel used by 10.1. This meant that it was not easily possible (believe me that I tried) to install onto the RAID array, since the driver is needed at BOOT time to configure the array.

The second problem that I encountered was the absence of the firmware for the hauppauge TV card in the default install. Moreover, the default ivtv driver was buggy and hard crashed the system whenever I attempted to change channels.

So cutting short the long story of how I manually built and installed updated drivers and dealt with multiple configuration issues we arrive at openSUSE 10.2.

Guess what….

The arcmsr is STILL not in the upstream kernel (2.6.18 this time) mostly because Erich Chen at Areca dropped the ball and didn’t push the driver into the kernel (disappeared from the mailing lists for months at a time)

The ivtv driver is not yet ready for integration into the mainline due to numerous missing APIs in the V4L2 universe.

So I did not bother upgrading. Primarily I felt that I would only have to deal with those same problems all over again.

That brings us to the present day.

I have upgraded my Laptop and Desktop Workstation to openSUSE 10.2, and things are more or less totally peachy on both those systems. The MythTV Media Server is still somewhat stable at 10.1.

More or less, my present configuration is very pleasing. Except for the stability issues on the Media Server.

So what next?

openSUSE 10.3 Scheduled for October 4, 2007

Finally with enough community grumbling and pushing, the arcmsr driver was included in 2.6.19 so I can reliably install onto the RAID controller of my media center.

If the development schedule gods are in a good mood, then openSUSE 10.3 will include a shiny new 2.6.22 kernel. If they are in a slightly grumpy mood, then openSUSE 10.3 will include the old fashioned, and slightly ruffled 2.6.21 kernel.

Why am a cheering for 2.6.22? Well, the ivtv guys have done a spectacular job of integrating ivtv into V4L and also worked with intel/hauppauge to provide a very sleek firmware redistribution license!

This should make the upgrade of my media server one of the sweetest things to watch.

Now if only I could get a discrete graphics accelerator from Intel with Open Source drivers…

-Ted

As one of the rare users of a vanilla 386 computer, the news that the vanilla 386 will not be supported in future versions of openbsd is somewhat sad but not unexpected.

I have been very proud of my 386 (which I upgraded with a 387DX, 16MB of memory, a 4.3 gb hard disk as well as a collection network cards). However, it’s days with OpenBSD are now numbered to 154 (number of days until 4.2 is released).

In the future I will migrate that particular machine to netbsd.

Thought you should know.

-Ted

The entire concept behind the *BSD OS’s are awesome. Free for any purpose. It’s great.

Unfortunately, these systems are built and used by people. And as usually is the case when people get involved, a certain number of zealots creep out of the woodwork.

These zealot people (zel-people) have the irritating habit of walking over other peoples ideas, thoughts, and perspectives. This bugs me a lot; thus, this blog post.

I just finished reading the following commentary about the experience that Beranger had in using the FreeBSD operating system: Taking a very long, huge break….

I personally very much sympathize with the author of that little article/rant.

Anyways, without going into to a long justification of how my perspective is right and those other people are wrong, I’ll finish up with a few thoughts that I sometimes try to live by.

• I distrust anyone who feels strongly about anything. I feel very strongly about this.
• People are a problem

While the gnu auto tools are certainly the best build system
configurators on the face of the planet, I can't help but be aggrivated
by the AC_PROG_LIBTOOL macro.

Supposedly this macro tells the build system how to configure itself to
link in libraries to a program, and for the most part it does the trick.

However, whenever I run the configure script to set up the build
environment, this macro tests for the presence and usability of a c++
and fortran compiler. It does this regardless of the fact that I am not
using c++ nor fortran and additionally not linking to a library written
in either of those two languages.

Not a big deal but it is certainly a waste of time (which becomes
readily apparent on my vanilla openbsd 386 with 16mb of ram).

Here's hoping unneccessary checks like this can be removed when libtool
2.0 roles into town.

-Ted